Ambri launches its first factory to make liquid metal batteries

Battery startup Ambri has officially cut the ribbon on its first ever battery manufacturing factory in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The company (formerly called Liquid Metal Battery) and backed by Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures and oil giant Total, will use the factory to make its first prototype battery systems for deployment next year and in 2015.

Ambri has developed a battery for the power grid that uses molten salt sandwiched between two layers of liquid metal. The company is the brainchild of MIT Professor Don Sadoway and the idea is to create a battery that uses super low cost materials but is stable and scalable at an acceptably low cost to enable grid storage and renewable energy storage applications.

Ambri won’t build a full scale commercial battery factory until 2015. But this factory in Marlborough will build prototype batteries that will land at the Joint Base Cape Cod and at a project…